“The days are long, but the years are short.” — Gretchen Rubin
It’s that time of the year again. Tax day’s got you throwing your hands up in frustration, your New Year’s resolutions have long vaporized into thin air and you feel like your hold on 2017 is getting weaker and weaker.
I’m here to tell you: You still have time. Read More
“Nobody likes you around here” is one of the nastiest weapons of negative workplace communication.
It hits right in the heart, gets you worked up and ready to lash out yourself, but worst of all, you start to wonder if they’re right.
So how do you respond to that phrase when it’s thrown right in your face?
Here’s the response I’ve come up with:
“Yeah, but nobody is just 30% of the people.”
This’ll startle them and they’ll scratch their head. In the meantime, you can go on to explain what I’m about to tell you.
There is a great story in James Altucher’s book Choose Yourself, which I will never forget.
He alludes to it on his blog as the 30/30/30 rule. James kept using images from the same woman doing yoga poses for his blog posts without giving her credit. Eventually, she messaged him and they started talking.
She told him that she found over the years, whatever she did, 30% of people loved her for it, 30% hated her for it and 30% just didn’t give a damn.
In my experience, that’s pretty accurate. So why not spend your time on those that love you?
“No matter who you are, no matter what you do, no matter who your audience is: 30 percent will love it, 30 percent will hate it, and 30 percent won’t care. Stick with the people who love you and don’t spend a single second on the rest. Life will be better that way.”
— James Altucher
And if they don’t buy this wonderful story, or point to the logical flaw of the remaining 10% missing, because we’ve used 30%, not 33%, nothing takes the wind out of their sails faster than a good old…
“Now what?”
If we get on the treadmill together, there are two options: You’re getting off first, or I’m going to die.
— Will Smith
But who are you running against? For most of your life, the person on the other treadmill is yourself.
Right now, the field might be crowded. Many people are ahead of you, and you can’t see who leads the pack. But once you start running faster than everyone else, you’ll soon be the only one left in the race.
Very few people have an outstanding work ethic. That’s what makes them outstanding. But it also means it’ll get lonely.
You don’t want what your friends want. You want what you want. So you shouldn’t care about winning against them.
Your true competitor is also your greatest fan.
Look at Will Smith again. He could’ve long stopped running. There’s no one for him to beat any more. As of 2016, his movies have grossed $7.5 billion at the global box office.
Why does a guy like that turn around and go straight to making more films?
When people like Will Smith glance at the other treadmill, they see a different version of themselves. One that’s not as good, as generous, as humble, as disciplined, as honest or as dedicated as they are.
That’s who they’re running against. Running from. Before long, you’ll be running against yourself too. You’ll have to, in order to keep going.
When you get there, I hope you’ll do what Will Smith does: keep running anyway.
As I was coming up with an example of a personal story I could tell where hard work beat intelligence (and I can think of a few), I realized something:
It doesn’t matter.
Why? Because hard work is your only option, either way.
Read More10 minutes, ha! I’m going to show you not one, but six things that will change your life — and we’ll do it with time to spare.
After this, you’ll feel calm, prepared and ready to take on the world, like this:
Let’s go!
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In 2001, my biggest dream came true: I used my Christmas money to buy the brand new PlayStation 2.
It wasn’t a dream come true because it was new, or because of the latest games. I was excited because it meant I could finally play all of those old PlayStation 1 games I used to play at my neighbor’s house or sit next to and watch.
One of the first games I bought was, of course, Tomb Raider III. I got a used copy, because it was cheaper.
When I opened the case to take out the CD, a little piece of paper fell out, with some weird scribblings on it. It looked like this:
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Learning how to pay for your own shit. You’ve spent enough time sponging off your parents. It’s time to start living in the real world.
One of my biggest “I wish’s” is “I wish my parents had forced me to take a job when I was younger.” I never had to work for anything growing up. If I wanted an Xbox, I could just wish for money for Christmas or my birthday and boom, there it was.
It’s not that I was horrible with money – I knew it was limited in supply. But I had no idea just how limited.
One time I remember trying to get a paper route. It would have meant delivering papers for 8 hours a day, twice a week – for 200 bucks a month. That’s a little over $3/hour for hard, manual labor.
In the end, my parents told me not to take it. I wish I had. Because after that, I would’ve learned an incredible valuable lesson: It’s fucking hard to make 200 bucks. And I never want to do it this way again.
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What you see up there is not a CGI rendering from a movie. It’s a real animal. An inhabitant of the Australian desert called the thorny dragon.
Let’s call him Trey. Trey does a few very uncommon things:
Pretty cool, huh? So how come you’ve never heard of Trey? I mean, he’s not the national animal of any country, there are few clips of him on Youtube and he hasn’t been on the cover of Forbes.
However, Trey, much like his fellow thorny dragons, has a lifespan of 15 to 20 years, which is an eternity in animal land. A few more evolutionary cycles and they’ll close in on the masters of longevity: turtles.
When we look for success, we usually turn to the commonalities of those, who’ve made it to the top. But what if we’re wrong?
Maybe, the only commonality of making it to the top is to not share many commonalities with others.
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Right this second, someone is recording a Youtube video, grinning from ear to ear, trying to sell you on the idea that if you’re not happy, there’s something wrong with you. Even worse, there’s probably also someone writing an article claiming they can show you how to fix it in seven easy steps.
First off, there is nothing wrong with you. If you don’t want to run around the streets naked right now or aren’t at the verge of a positivity-induced ecstatic breakdown, that’s just fine. What’s not fine is that there is a massive storm of fake happiness going on out there, and it leads to the kind of bad advice and “just be happy” bullying I just mentioned.
Today, you and I will identify, criticize, and debunk fake happiness. You will learn why people confuse happiness and something else, namely optimism. You will understand the true meaning and definition of optimism.
We will also learn how science defines optimism, which traits make a person optimistic, and how you can develop those traits in yourself, no matter whether you are an optimist or a pessimist right now. Let’s start by looking at 200 million pieces of terrible advice.
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Comfort.
In a world of Amazon, McDonalds, Netflix, Spotify, AirBnB, Uber and Tinder, nobody wants to do things the hard way.
Nobody’s willing to give up comfort now for greatness later. Everything in life has to be cheap, fast and easy.
Cheap, fast, easy.
Nothing worth having comes easy.
Nothing worth having comes fast.
Nothing worth having comes cheap.
If you’re not willing to be uncomfortable, you’ll never have the life you want.